


The Imprisoned Prince

by Adlanth



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-07-22 03:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7418371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adlanth/pseuds/Adlanth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He paced and prayed, he screamed and sang to himself, he slept and woke; he marked the passing of days and hours by the motion of a single square shaft of light across the stone floor of his cell; he hoped and despaired with every cycle that it made, until one day the pattern was broken, and a shadow fell unexpectedly; and he looked up, and saw, crouching on the wide stone sill of the one, high barred window, a child.</p>
<p>Thranduil in Amon Ereb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He paced and prayed, he screamed and sang to himself, he slept and woke; he marked the passing of days and hours by the motion of a single square shaft of light across the stone floor of his cell; he hoped and despaired with every cycle that it made, until one day the pattern was broken, and a shadow fell unexpectedly; and he looked up, and saw, crouching on the wide stone sill of the one, high barred window, a child.

They stared at each other. Thranduil held his breath. He felt as if one exhalation might send the boy tumbling out. He was a slender thing, and there was something bird-like about the way he crouched there. 

A minute elapsed. Then the boy vanished, as swiftly and as quietly as he had appeared. Stepped back through the bars, his grey gaze never leaving Thranduil. Dropped down, agile as a monkey. 

Gone. 

***

That night Thranduil had a visit from his father. 

He knew it was not truly him. His cell was a blind grey hole, with a single square of lighter darkness where the window was; but Oropher was bathed in candlelight, as if he still stood under the lanterns and glittering garlands that had adorned Menegroth. His honey-coloured hair shone, and so did his dark eyes, and light caught in his long deep green robes. Thranduil clutched his ratty cover to himself.

‘You brought this on yourself,’ said Oropher.

Trust him - even as a vision conjured up by a too lonely brain - to point out Thranduil’s faults.

‘It was not my purpose to be captured, father.’

‘No, but you were careless enough to let it happen.’

‘What should I have done?’

‘You should have followed me.’

How long had it been since he’d last seen Oropher? Three decades - nay, more. They had parted on the Iant Iaur, the bridge that spanned the foaming waters of Esgalduin, where beneath them the river flowed red. They had fled north after the attack, a straggling desperate crowd, even as the sons of Fëanor rode south and east to their stronghold. He remembered Celeborn, at the head of the march, taller by half a foot at least than the rest of them, and seeming taller still because of the girl, Elwing, that sat on his shoulders. When they stopped for a brief rest, he saw her standing stiffly by the stone parapet, staring out with empty eyes. There and then he’d known he would serve her for as long as he lived, or she did. But his father had decided otherwise.

‘How could you leave us?’ he asked his father.

Oropher answered now as he had then.

‘There is no hope left for our people.’

‘I do not agree. Neither did Celeborn, or Galadriel.’

‘No. But she is a Noldo, and he, and you, were infected by her Noldo beliefs: an inability to comprehend and accept one’s own defeat. But perhaps this’ (Oropher’s gesture encompassed the close, cold walls, and the iron bars at the window, and the fortress that crouched on the hill) ‘has taught you better.’

‘No,’ said Thranduil. ‘It has not.’ 

Empty words. Oropher laughed, and dissolved.

***

The next night, Dior came to him. 

He seemed so beautiful, so sad. Thingol’s overlarge crown fell lopsided across his brow, a gleaming of gold about the black cloak of his hair. 

Thranduil, in his desire to comfort him, almost fell from his stone bench, and crept towards his lord. He wanted to lay a hand on him, but dared not. Besides, Dior looked away from him. A tear trickled down his fair cheek, then his jaw. Thranduil ached with wanting to wipe it away, nay, to dry its source. 

‘My prince,’ he said, soft and beseeching, ‘why do you weep?’

‘I weep for my sons,’ Dior answered, ‘my murdered boys, who died alone.’

I weep for you, Thranduil thought, my Aranel, my slaughtered prince.

‘I weep for my daughter,’ Dior went on. ‘Driven from her home…’

‘I followed her, my prince. Your daughter lived, and grew strong, and ruled your people.’

Dior turned. His grey gaze, starlight through water, fell upon Thranduil. 

‘Where is she, then? For I cannot find her under the eaves of the wood, nor upon the mountains, nor yet on the vast plains. Not even by the sea did I find her…’

‘Yet she did live there.’

Thranduil remembered the Havens of Sirion, so different from Menegroth, yet fair in their ramshackle way. The house of Elwing had been beautiful, standing with white walls by the margin of the sea. There she had ruled; and taken her husband, and borne her children.

But Dior was not consoled.

‘I found her not.’

And Thranduil remembered also the smoke and the blood. He wished he did not, for now that rain of ash fell upon Dior, and his trickling tears grew red. He huddled against his lord, and grasped at beloved hands, but still Dior wept for his quenched bloodline. 

***

On the third night, his mother who stood before him. Her features also seemed drawn, but the expression on her face was one of sadness rather than sternness. Oropher had worn the green robes he favoured in truth, but her gown was dark and red.

‘Why did you come here?’ she asked. 

‘For you.’

‘Long have been the years since I last set foot on Amon Ereb.’

‘But you always spoke of it.’

Amrûnis was of Silvan stock, and she had been born before the crossing of Ered Luin, in the Eastern lands that Thranduil had never yet seen. As a young woman she had passed through the mountains, following Aran Denethor, her kin; and she had long walked the green woods of Ossiriand before she met Oropher. But after their marriage he had persuaded her to join him beyond the Girdle of Melian. It was there that she had given birth to Thranduil. Still, she would often speak to him of torrents leaping silver among the untouched trees: Adurant, Duilwen, Brilthor; and further north, Legolin and Thalos… Where Legolin met Gelion, she’d said, you could see far over the plain. Far, far away was the Long Wall of the hills, but closest was the hill of Amon Ereb, rising solitary above the land. When the sun set, its dark head lay against the yellow sky; and its shadow lay very long across the land…

‘My king and kin died there,’ she said softly. ‘I am glad I went to Doriath.’

‘Perhaps it would have been best if you had not.’ His heart was heavy and sore in his chest. ‘If I had not been born. Then you would not-’ Her bloodied upraised arms, the too slender shield of her body, her-

‘My child, no.’

She moved forward, and laid a hand on his. He could see it, brown and slender upon his; but he could not feel it. The ache in his chest deepened. 

‘I wanted to see it,’ he said plaintively. 

‘Not that alone. Was it vengeance?’

‘Maybe.’ 

A sigh, or perhaps the whistling of the wind through iron bars. 

‘Child, do not do in my name what I abhor and fear.’

‘But you are not here.’ You lie beside the Esgalduin, in the shadow of an oak, where your bones will tangle with tree roots. Even now she was disappearing, a mere image made by his frightened mind to comfort him, a reflection on troubled waters. But the memory of her still, cold body, pierced by Golodh arrows, did nothing to soothe him. His blood rose in him, hot and dark. A frenzy of anger; he might have risen, dashed the thick door from its hinges, run up the stairs to his captors - her killers, yes, if not the hand that had wielded the bow, then the lips that had given the order -, he would have made them swallow their murderous tongues, and smashed their slaughtering brains…

But of course the door was stronger. 

On the way he had nursed such thoughts, to keep himself warm while he trudged alone through the land, fearful of Orcs and other dark things. He would smuggle himself unseen into the fortress, carry out his vengeance swiftly, and then continue East, find his proud father.

Instead…

He had been making his way up a narrow but deep gorge that slashed the land at the foot of the hill. At first, high jagged cliffs surrounded him, but that had made him feel safer, for he was but a few miles from the fortress walls. Then, as he’d gone on the bottom of the ravine had risen steadily towards the level on the plain. He was quenching his thirst from the stream that ran down the gorge when they’d found him - the sharp tip of a spear pricking the nape of his neck… and his woodsman’s pride.

He’d been shackled summarily, without a word or a glance of sympathy, or even anger. A trammelled animal, led (so he believed then, trembling in his chains in spite of himself) to the slaughter. But they had merely brought him to the castle. After a wide low outer gate, he had gone through a first courtyard, where a towering oak tree, thick-trunked and gnarled, grew. In spite of his fear Thranduil had stared at it as he was dragged through the yard, remembering the stories Amrûnis had told him of Denethor’s tomb. Then they had gone through a gate to the inner ward, and there he’d been made to kneel on cold stone, and wait.

There his fear had turned to humiliation, to rage. To be captured, to be - to be - killed, yes - that was one thing, but to wait? They did not have the decency to give a swift death. Instead he had to endure the wait, the soldiers that came and went, indifferent to him. 

Then there had been the touch of a boot, nudging him to look up, and there, a few feet from him, eyeing him coolly, was Maglor. Thranduil had not noticed him at first, among the press of the Fëanorians’ soldiers, for his face was plain and so was his garb, a long brown woollen cloak, rather than the blood-stained armour in which Thranduil had seen him twice before.

At the sight of him anger rushed through him. His muscles tightened, like a bow’s rope. He was ready to spring up, challenge Maglor, kill him with bare hands or teeth.

But no. Remembering this, Thranduil in his cell gave a bitter bark of laughter, and then whimpered to himself. There is no need to accept the challenge of a dog, or a worm, and Maglor had looked at him as if he were no more than that, and perhaps less. A guard had whispered in his ear, and Maglor, glancing back to the keep, then to Thranduil, had said (his voice so melodious, so startling, coming from such an ordinary body): ‘Take him to a cell.’ 

They’d obeyed, and there he was. The door that had shut behind him that day had not opened again. It would never open again. Never, never, nevernevernever

‘Mother!’ he screamed to the empty air. But he was laughing and weeping, and could not easily summon her to his mind’s eye. He tried to hear her voice, softly whispering…

Thranduil…

‘I could not avenge you. I cannot. I will die here.’ 

Elves were not made to be confined in cells, far from the sun and wind and leaves and hope. And what did he have to live for? 

***

Dawn found him in a crumpled heap, hunkering down against the cell wall. He felt bewildered and weak. His nails were torn and bloody, and he could not exactly remember why. He pressed himself deeper against the wall, as if it could ward him, pressed his knees to his chest and his head to his knees.

Then there was a flutter of sound above him. He looked up, squinting against the sunlight. He could not see well, his eyes hot and sore, his lashes thick with grime and tears. ‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted. But the shape in the window did not move.

He wiped his eyes with the heel of his palms, his fists still clenched, fingers shot through with pain. Why would they not leave him to die? He looked up.

The boy was here again. 

‘What do you want?’

No answer. But the child edged forward on the stone windowsill, clinging to the iron bars, each of them slightly thicker than what his small hands could clasp. Thranduil this time noticed his unruly hair, so dark as to be nearly black, and his eyes, of a pure, light grey, which stared curiously at Thranduil. All of him - and the boy’s features, delicate and fair even in extreme youth - was fey yet lovely to look upon - and familiar.

But it could not be. Thranduil saw again the face of a dead child, stiff and cold. A trick of hope, an illusion of the brain, that still wants to live, and will deceive itself. And these other children, a tide of blood still upon them, and all their screaming spent, still and lifeless as they were - dragged away. Dragged away… 

But that child - the child he could see even now - was not still. He moved, careful, something untamed and wary about him - yet even so, he moved, and moved towards him, even as Thranduil gaped, mind awhirl, and slipped boldly through the iron bars, to come crouch on the inner part of the sill. 

‘Who are you?’ he whispered. ‘What is your name?’

The boy looked at him in silence. With every second certainty grew in Thranduil (had he not seen him and his brother in the cradle?), and every second a part of his mind rose in mad laughter and mockery of that hope (dead, dead, dead).

But finally the boy spoke. His voice was low and clear and there was an odd lilt in it that was not familiar to Thranduil. But he spoke and he said:

‘My name’s Elrond.’

Thranduil burst into laughter, and a torrent of tears rushed down his face. The boy shrank back, but did not flee. Then through his tears Thranduil called out: ‘Hello, o hope! I am Thranduil.’


	2. Chapter 2

After that, the boy came often to visit, every day or every other day. He would always slip in through the window, and remain perched on the windowsill. Sometimes he brought titbits of food, pilfered from the kitchen or the fortress’s stores, which he would throw in Thranduil’s cell; sometimes not.

Thranduil never knew when to expect him, but was always glad to see him. No, it was more than that. He felt himself exist then. In his cell it was easy to forget who he was, or _that_ he was. Alone, he would become as grey as the walls of his cell, and feel himself float weightlessly through an airless void, though at the same time he knew he did not move, but remained pinned to his stony cot. His own body would grow foreign to him then, and time lost meaning, either dragging on in seeming eternity, or flitting by in the blink of an eye. Once he spent hours examining his own hands, his own feet, as though they were strange artefacts, dead things.

But when Elrond was here, he was someone again. In Elrond’s presence his blood would flow heavier in his veins, grounding him; his breath blew strongly in and out of him; he would remember that he was alive.

He had the boy tell him stories of the world outside. Elrond’s awareness did not range very widely, and some topics he seemed to keep close to his heart - of his brother he never spoke, nor of his captor Maglor. Maedhros, he said once, was on the hunt - Thranduil made a note of that - but nothing more. Still, little by little the boy told Thranduil of the daily comings and goings in the castle. His tales were of little consequence, but they helped Thranduil remember that he was not lost forever in nothingness, but that life went on close by.

Elrond would tell him about the hounds, and how happy they had been to have been given meat; and Thranduil would make sense of all the barking he had heard the evening before. The boy spoke of the cook, and the full cauldron of stew he’d made; of the blacksmith burned fingers; of the men-at-arms’ raucous songs in the hall at night. Thranduil learned to people the Amon Ereb of his mind.

Yet one was missing, Thranduil mused, from Elrond’s tales; and that was Elrond himself. Thranduil learned of what the blacksmith said, but not of what Elrond said to him, or was told - or else but when the child was told to scamper off, go away - the end to many a story. An absence, a little ghost, flitting through stone walls.

 

***

 Elrond was late to come. One day passed, then another, with no sign of him. That was nothing, Thranduil decided. It was to be expected. He was a child, young and lively, with much to do.

It did not matter, and so he did not rage. He sank against the wall of his cell, and let the dim winter sunlight wash over him and then ebb away again. It was close and cold inside, and outside all was grey.

Then, on the fifth day, Elrond returned. One moment Thranduil was lying listlessly there, and then suddenly the child was there, and Thranduil was propping himself up so he could sit up on his stone bench, and saying brightly:

‘Hello! I missed you.’

‘I was punished,’ said Elrond. ‘I had to stay in my rooms, except for meals. Sorry I couldn’t bring you anything.’

‘That’s fine.’ It truly was. Thranduil felt as if something in his chest were being pried loose, like shutters thrown open to the fresh air after a long winter. ‘Why were you punished?’

‘I’m an insolent whelp,’ said Elrond. ‘Maedhros said so. I should learn to keep my mouth shut.’ He shrugged. Today he wore a thick quilted jacket that made him seem plumper than usual, but above its fur-lined collar his face was slender and fine, and the winter sun lent it a hard, glimmering aspect, as if clear glazing had been laid upon his fair skin.

‘Maedhros is back from the hunt, then?’

‘He came back a week ago.’

Thranduil nodded. Whatever had opened in his chest started tightening again.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘Maedhros is a coward and a tyrant, if he has to lock you up for speaking your mind.’

Elrond looked at him silently. Then, after a while, he said:

‘You’re a dirty Sinda thief.’

Thranduil startled as if punched. He made himself smile.

‘I take it back. You _are_ an insolent whelp.’

‘It’s what Maedhros said of you. I overheard him speaking with Maglor, when they thought Elros and I were abed.’

‘Ah. It is true, I am Sinda. And do you believe the rest of it?’

‘Not really. You _are_ dirty, but that’s not your fault. And you’re not a thief.’

‘And why not?’

Elrond smiled at him, as if he’d said something especially silly.

‘There’s nothing to steal here,’ he said.

At that moment a shaft of bright sunlight fell across his eyes, and lit the pure grey therein with white fire. Thranduil knew these eyes - had seen them in Elwing’s face, in Dior’s, even - ever so briefly - in Lúthien’s, and Melian’s too… His heart stuttered in his chest, the remembrance so bright and aching.

_But of course there is._

 ***

 Elrond left soon after. The dinner bell had rung, and Maedhros, he'd said, did not appreciate lateness. Thranduil had been glad to see the child. Even so, his parting words had chilled him to the core, far more than the cold that seeped through the walls of his cell.

 _They_ ' _re coming to see you. Maedhros said he would decide what to do._

Thranduil shuddered against his will. All he had to keep himself warm was the memory of his last words to Elrond; the sight of the boy’s attentively tilted head.

_He understands how important this is. He has to. He will._

***

 The sons of Fëanor came the next evening. Thranduil had been sinking into a restless doze, but the sound of the oaken door scraping back on the cobbles, though not entirely unexpected, sent him cowering into a corner of his cell. Later he would feel ashamed; but for now he merely stared, as Maglor first, then Maedhros, came in - the latter stooping to make his way through the doorway, then standing nightmarishly tall in the cell.

If Maedhros, once a captive himself, was moved to any sort of pity for his prisoner, he kept it well hidden. In his gaze Thranduil felt less than an insect. Maglor might have been a serving boy, saying _‘I thought you might want this’_ as he offered up a half plateful of chewed bones, and Maedhros would not have seemed more contemptuous, less interested. He looked at Thranduil once, then murmured, eyes flickering towards Maglor:

‘This is the one that has been troubling you so?’ Then, to Thranduil himself: ‘And who are you?’

‘My name is Thranduil. Son of lord Oropher, and -’ he steadied his voice ‘the lady Amrûnis.’

‘Am I meant to know these names?’

‘Only if you remember those you killed in Doriath, kinslayer.’

Maedhros’s gaze grew colder still. His hand came to rest on the pommel of his dagger.

‘Who sent you?’ he asked. A flicker of steel in his voice, scraping along Thranduil’s bones. In Maedhros’s shadow Maglor was quiet and still, but watchful.

‘No one.’

‘Are you certain? You were not sent to spy here by our cousin Galadriel as she calls herself, or that dark husband of hers?’  

‘No.’

‘Then why are you here?’

Thranduil laughed.

‘If it displeases you, step aside and I will leave this cell instantly.’

Maglor spoke now, his voice low and soft but no less commanding. ‘Answer, Sinda.’

‘Your soldiers brought me here, damn you!’

Maedhros’s armoured stump struck him hard.

‘You will not disrespect my brother,’ he said, very softly, even as Thranduil, his mouth bleeding, reeled away. And again: ‘Why are you here? Are you Gil-galad’s boy, then? Or Cirdan’s?’

Thranduil did not answer. _I was Thingol’s_ _man_ , he thought. _Melian_ _’s._ He could not always remember them, so awe-inspiring they had been, and so little he had seen them. He remembered Dior, though, his beautiful Dior. _I was his_. A choking sob seized him, and when he tried to clamp his mouth shut he tasted blood.

He rushed at Maedhros, fists raised. Maedhros barely seemed to move, and yet pain shot through Thranduil’s body. Before he knew it he was sitting in a crumpled heap in a corner of his cell. The sons of Fëanor looked at him in disgust.

‘He is nothing,’ said Maedhros. ‘We’ll take him out to the woods next morning. I’ll deal with him there.’

A chill ran through Thranduil. Then - a flurry of footsteps in the nearby corridor, a shout of ‘come back!’, a small shape hurtling in. _Rescue_. The boy stood clinging to Maglor’s cloak, and glanced at Thranduil. Thranduil gave him the briefest of smiles, tight but grateful. _He remembered_. But there was no recognition in the boy’s gaze.

A moment of panic, and then Thranduil understood. _That must be Elros_. Same feathery black hair, slender build, delicate features; and something different, too, about the eyes. A second later Elrond came rushing in.

‘Boys!’ Maglor exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’ He sounded exasperated, but not as angry as Thranduil might have feared. Elrond shrugged, but Elros spoke up:

‘We wanted to see the prisoner.’

‘How did you know about him?’ Maedhros now, his tone harsher. He was glaring at Elrond, not Elros, and the boy stood against the wall as if pinned there by this sharp, angry gaze - unmoving, trapped, and yet somehow still defiant, staring back, refusing to answer or look aside. Suddenly Maedhros turned his glare from him to Thranduil.

‘You,’ he said. ‘Did you have words with the boys?’

Thranduil spoke through the pain.

‘I was locked in this cell. Ask your guards.’

Maedhros harrumphed. He seemed suspicious still, but said nothing more. Behind him Maglor seemed puzzled, uncertain. Elros had not left his side; and Elrond, once ignored by Maedhros, had sidled back to him. He grasped the hem of Maglor’s cloak, and the elf, without looking, reached back to tousle his hair. A simple gesture, that… yet to Thranduil it suggested an intimacy that made him, suddenly, uneasy. Of course the boy would do well not to antagonise both of his captors; it was only reasonable to try and wheedle out whatever kindness he might, whilst biding his time, and yet…

 _But Maglor’s_ _not their kin_. _He_ stole _them._

‘What happened to the prisoner, Maglor?’ That was Elrond piping up, as if the sight of a battered elf in a cell was no uncommon occurrence. ‘Why is there blood on his face?’ In his upturned face his eyes seemed very wide and innocent. And yet he was not - surely Maglor (who had shattered that innocence on the day Sirion burned) would see through that. But no; Maglor looked flustered and uncertain. It might have made Thranduil laugh, had he not been in such pain. Maedhros had to intervene, turning to Elrond to bark:

‘That’s none of your concern, boy. Out, now.’ Another shout, addressed to his still stunned brother. ‘Maglor! Get them out.’

Maglor laid a hand on Elros’s shoulder, nudging him out. Both seemed unhappy, and the sight of Maglor’s misery at least brought Thranduil some savage joy, though he could not relish Elros’s. Only Elrond seemed unperturbed; he slid out from Maglor’s hand, and went on: ‘What will happen to him? Why are you taking him out to the woods?’

‘Elrond!’ Maglor cried out, panic in his voice.

‘Will you kill him?’

Maedhros strode forward, grabbed Elrond’s collar, and dragged him towards the door. Elrond’s small feet scuffed against the stone floor, and still he spoke on, his voice unperturbed: ‘Will you kill the prisoner, Maglor? Maedhros, will you kill him?’ For one moment Thranduil feared that Maedhros would strike the boy as he had struck him, but no; he merely tossed the child out. A thud, Elrond’s breath knocked out of his lungs, and then his voice rising again. Maglor hurried out with Elros, closed the door. Maedhros and Thranduil remained alone in the cell, as Maglor’s voice and Elrond’s faded away.

 ***

 After a while, Maedhros said:

‘A fine trick you two played. You caught me in your snare. Played on my gentle heart. Don’t laugh. I have always had a soft spot for my brother. I would never hurt his pets. And now that the boys have seen you - well, I can’t very well hurt my brother’s pets’ pet.’ A tilt of the head. ‘Or did the boy ensnare you? He would do that.’

Thranduil did not want to ask, did not trust him. Still he heard himself ask:

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’d decided to let you go after all, having made certain you were not spying on behalf of our enemies. But of course now…’

‘You lie. You always lie. Traitor, kinslayer.’

‘Traitor, maybe, and kinslayer certainly, but liar? This is new. Why would I lie to you? That would require more respect than I have for you.’

‘You would lie for spite, not profit. You are owed a killing.’

‘I have had my share of killing already. Maglor thought it best to hold you, but I see little sense in that. My men have better things to do than guard you, and what harm could you do if set free? Poor spy that you are, you’d seen nothing of us, as far as Maglor could tell. But now you’ve seen our little captives… You know, Maglor and I were never in agreement about them. Should we let the world know that we hold them, or not? If Gil-galad, or Galadriel, knew we had their kinsmen, would they not want to assault and claim them back? And if they knew we did _not_ have them, would they not also attack, secure in the knowledge that we held no hostages? So we thought we would confuse our enemies. None of them have any men to spare for so uncertain a campaign, not knowing the prize or cost.’

Silence. Thranduil’s throat was tight and sore now, the air painful to him.

‘Of course, you would change all this,’ Maedhros went on. ‘Gil-galad or Celeborn might decide that a bout of kinslaying is worth it after all, if the reward is to see the boys again. They would find no joy, of course, but I will not have my brother - my men - exposed. So I think you’ll spend rather some time with us.’

 _Elrond_ , Thranduil thought. _Elrond! You could not know._ _Could_ _you?_


	3. Chapter 3

Soon after, Thranduil  made his decision.  
  
‘Elrond,’ he said one day. ‘You must help me escape.’  
  
‘Why do you want to leave?’ The boy looked crestfallen all of a sudden, sullen and sad and childish. But of course he was childish - no, a child.   
  
‘You know why. They might kill me, even after what you did. And besides… I can’t be a prisoner forever.’  
  
‘Why not? I’ll be a prisoner forever.’  
  
‘Come with me, then.’  
  
Elrond stared at him curiously.   
  
‘What about Elros?’  
  
‘He needs to come too.’  
  
A silence. Then: ‘Maglor will be looking for us.’ Suddenly Elrond’s grey gaze was fixed, opaque, as closed as the dreary overcast sky above him. The sight of it made Thranduil feel uneasy, ill-prepared for the boy’s changeful moods.    
  
‘We’ll be fast,’ he said. ‘And stealthy. He won’t find us.’  
  
Elrond stared at him, as though somehow Thranduil had misunderstood him. His lips were pressed tightly together. Then he shook his head, and said:  
  
‘You can’t escape like this. You’re hurt.’   
  
Thranduil’s head dropped down. There was no denying that. Blood had dripped down his nose, his brow, his lip, and crusts of it caked his jaw and neck still, though he’d tried to rub most of it off; his face throbbed, and when he ran his tongue around his mouth he thought he could feel a loosened tooth. But that was not the worst of it. His shoulder was sore, and so were his ribs on the right side, from when Maedhros had thrown him against the wall. He’d also twisted his left ankle landing. At the time he had not noticed, in his anger and fear, but now the pain was less easy to ignore. The injuries were minor, and in time they would heal fully… but even so, they might hinder his escape for a while.  
  
‘How is it outside the window?’ he asked Elrond. ‘How do you manage to slip in?’  
  
Elrond leaned back against the iron bars, legs dangling from the window sill, some feet above Thranduil. High, but not so high that Thranduil might not leap and reach…  
  
‘The wall’s rough hewn. It’s easy to climb from above, if you know the way down from the battlements,’ said Elrond. ‘Then from here it goes down steeply, but I don’t think it’s very high. I can see the tree tops from here, and they’re not very tall. But I don’t know the way down the hill.’  
  
Thranduil nodded. He was trying to imagine the way down - trying to remember the shape of the hill. But he did not known enough about the fortress.   
  
‘Is it doable, Elrond?’ he asked.  
  
The boy shrugged.  
  
‘I think so.’  
  
Elrond, don’t shrug away my life. He imagined himself tumbling down the steep stone wall, landing with a crash among the trees, neck snapping a branch, and shuddered. Elrond might fly away - he had the blood for it, and a bird-like look as he perched on the sill - but not him.   
  
‘I could bring Elros,’ Elrond said. ‘He would know how to help.’  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
Elrond made good on his offer. The next day he brought his brother.  
  
Alike and unlike, Thranduil mused. They looked exactly the same, slender and lovely and bright. But where Elrond jumped blithely into the cell, scraping his knees on the stone after a stumble, Elros inched in carefully. 'I don't like heights,' he explained afterwards. 'They remind me of mother. She fell from a cliff.' And then, hopeful and solemn: 'Did you know her?'  
  
That was the other difference: Elrond was as wild and slippery as he was bold, but Elros looked at things squarely, neither cowardly nor reckless. Thranduil thought he might make a fine ruler one day. Elrond you would follow into battle, but with Elros you would build things.  
  
And Elros could heal, apparently. As Elros lowered himself gingerly into the cell, Elrond (who had jumped in and skinned his knee, though it didn't seem to bother him in the least) proclaimed proudly: 'Elros has the hands of a healer.'   
  
As the twins stood before him, Thranduil was surprised anew by the smallness of them. They had begun looming so very large in his life, these two; he had invested them with so much importance and potential greatness; that it was hard to remember sometimes that though they were human-grown and so swift in some ways, they were as yet mere boys.  
  
So, Elros. He stood before Thranduil, small but determined to help. He pointed to his would be patient's ankle and said: 'May I?'  
  
Thranduil nodded, and extended his leg. Then, as Elros bent to his task, he glanced at Elrond, standing behind his brother with an air of focused, intent pride.  
  
And then, as Elros’s hands closed around his ankles… Aah. A feeling of warmth spread through him, and a sigh of surprised contentment bubbled out of his lips. Elros looked up and then shied back, letting go of Thranduil's ankle as if it had burned him.  
  
'Did I hurt you?'  
  
'No! Elros, that was wonderful. Thank you.' The lancing ache in his ankle had ebbed down to a dull throb, that was even now fading further. Meanwhile a look of shy pleasure appeared on the boy's face. And behind him Elrond beamed - seeming happier now, Thranduil noticed, than he had ever seemed before.  
  
As Elros moved up to stand on the bench where Thranduil sat so he could tend to his shoulder, Thranduil asked him:  
  
'How did you learn this?'  
  
'I never learned. One day lord Maglor was in pain and I tried to help him and he said he had never felt such relief before. So that's how I found out. I think I was born with it.'   
  
‘There was a saying,’ Thranduil said. The memory had come back to him, unbidden, words caught whilst walking the Havens’ streets. ‘The hands of a healer are the hands of a king.’ Or perhaps it was the other way around. But Elros looked at him queerly, with quizzical eyes; and then seemed to not be looking at him at all but through him - or rather not, but as if some ocean mist had come between him and Thranduil, making him seem all of a sudden very distant…  
  
The moment passed. Again warmth seemed to flow from Elros’s fingers and into Thranduil’s shoulder, then to his aching ribs. Seconds later, Thranduil felt better, and Elros seemed again an ordinary boy.   
  
'Elros,' Thranduil said, 'I have a secret to tell you. You can't tell Lord Maglor.'  
  
Elros looked troubled by that. His gaze flicked back anxiously towards his brother. 'I mean to escape. Elrond said he would help me.'  
  
A look of relief appeared on Elros's face. Before Thranduil could finish, he exclaimed brightly: 'I won't tell anyone! I could help out too, if you wanted to.'  
  
Thranduil pointed to his ankle and to his shoulder. 'You already have. But that's not all. Elrond is escaping with me. What we need to know is if you will come with me. With us.'  
  
'Where will we be going?' Elros asked.  
  
A sensible question; one that Elrond had not thought to ask.   
  
'East,' Thranduil answered. 'That's our best chance, if we can cross the mountains. We'll be safe from Morgoth' (would they?) 'and we have family there.'  
  
Elros scrunched up his nose in confusion.  
  
'Are we related?'  
  
'I meant my family, and yours. My father, Oropher, if I can find him, and your great-uncle Celeborn, and your... Well, I think she's your cousin, Galadriel. So what do you say?'   
  
Elros remained silent for a long while. Thranduil could not decipher the emotion on his face, fixed and still, except for the minute working of his jaw. At length he said: 'Yes. I want to come with you.'   
  
But then he turned to his brother, and it seemed to Thranduil that there was a mute question in his too-weary eyes. Not one that Thranduil could understand, though. Not one he wanted to understand.  
  
No. All be thought of was his escape, his prizes.   
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
The next few days were spent preparing.  
  
Elrond would often come to his window, and bring him odds and ends, a half-elven magpie. Mostly he brought food: handfuls of bread, dried meats, sweets and slices of cheese. Some he’d pilfered from food stores, he said; others were leftovers from meals, things that - he said - Maglor would have forced him to eat had he not stuffed them in his pockets or his sleeves. Then again perhaps he should have, this slender bare-boned boy.  
  
He also brought a file, stolen from the blacksmith’s forge. This Elrond used to file one of the iron bars that closed the window. Thranduil could not reach the bars, for they stood fast to the inner rim of the wall, but still he felt a little guilty, to see the boy toil away. Then again Elrond did not seem to mind. As Thranduil sang, to distract the guards and cover any noises the file might make, he worked hard and without cease. In his small, narrow face, his grey eyes burned steadily and fiercely.   
  
So he would not stop for anything, not even when blisters sprouted on his hands and then burst. His fingers shook, but Thranduil had to beg him to pause, to save his strength.  
  
Afterwards, Elrond came back with bandaged hands. He’d lied, he said quietly, too quietly, he’d offered an excuse for his wounds; so Maglor had smoothed a healing ointment into his raw skin, and carefully bound his wounds.  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
And then, one evening, it was done. The last metal thread that bound the iron bar to the wall broke at last. Elrond held the piece of metal aloft for one moment, his hands too small to hold the bar comfortably; and then he tossed it out. Thranduil did not hear it hit the ground below.  
  
Something else seemed to come loose, in Elrond. The fever that had shone in his eyes these past few days dimmed; his face crumpled. He looked uncertain and frightened. His eyes sought Thranduil’s in the gloom, and he said:  
  
‘Don’t leave without me.’  
  
Thranduil shook his head. ‘Never,’ he wanted to say.  
  
But the fever was rising again in the child’s eyes, a wild grey fire - despair, Thranduil realised, without understanding. Elrond spoke again:   
  
‘Or else I’ll call the guards on you, and Maedhros and Maglor. They’ll bring you back to me. Don’t leave me.’


	4. Chapter 4

They left that same night. The twins alighted on his window an hour or so after sunset.

Thranduil’s first attempt to reach them had him slamming his barely healed shoulder into the wall; he realised with a pang of apprehension how much his strength had been sapped by poor food and confinement. But the boys were waiting for him, and so he gritted his teeth and tried again. On the second try he managed to grab one of the remaining iron bars, and dangled for a moment, before pulling himself up and through. For all the thickness of the wall it was cramped up there, with the three of them on the sill; but he crawled forward, and for the first time in weeks, months even, let his head hang outside the fortress. He breathed the air in, slowly and deeply, drinking it in as if it were sweet wine.

‘Thranduil, sir,’ said one of the boys in his ear, urgent and quiet, Elros most likely. ‘We have to leave now.’

So they did. Thranduil went first, for fear that otherwise he might sent the boys tumbling down if he were to lose his footing. In spite of his earlier misgiving, his strength seemed to return to him with each passing minute, and he found himself climbing down with more and more surety and speed, making sure only not to outpace Elros, who above him was going slowly and carefully. Last came Elrond, light and fleet. As they went down, the rough-hewn wall became untouched stone - the foundation of the hill itself, riven with cracks - and then turned to muddy ground, planted with dense trees and brambles.

At last they reached a spot where they could rest. But of course they could not stop for long. All too soon the absence of the boys would be noticed, Thranduil knew, or his; and then the hunt would begin. It would be wise to cover as much ground as possible before then. The children would need rest eventually, true, but Thranduil hoped to find some sort of refuge away from the fortress.

So they walked on. They were on the south-eastern side of the hill, if Thranduil’s bearings were correct - but then he thought he’d spent enough time in his cell, observing the motion of sun and shadows, to know well enough. And it was a good thing, for it was on this side of the fortress that he had been captured. A gorge cleft the land nearby, and if they could get beyond it, then they would be safe from riders at least, whose horses would not be made to risk the too-steep banks, and who would therefore have to make a wide detour. Hunters on foot might follow, but at least they would be slower, less likely to catch up with them.

The night grew deeper, and the woods darker. The boys, Thranduil noticed, did not see as well as he did in the gloom, and they would often stumble on a root or rock, despite his efforts to right them with a hand on their collar or their shoulder. Still, they were uncomplaining, and silent.

Soon before dawn, having climbed down the gorge and made their way along its floor (muddy, with a stream that Thranduil hoped might wash out their scent and disguise it from the hounds) for some time, they settled down to sleep. Thranduil did not feel he needed much rest - on the contrary, a restless energy shot through his too-long neglected and stilled body - but too often now the boys had stumbled. He did not want them to injure themselves, not when they had such a long journey ahead them, to the mountains of Ossiriand and beyond. Sometimes, the thought of the miles before them made Thranduil’s stomach clench. The distance, and Morgoth’s creatures between, all with these two children… perhaps he’d made a terrible mistake.

They made their nest beneath a rocky outcrop, in what was too shallow to be quite a cave, but might protect them from rain. Thranduil lay sitting up, his legs stretched out before him, determined to keep guard; but the boys curled up on the uneven ground, beneath a blanket that Elrond, as instructed by Thranduil, had taken from their room.

Thranduil looked at the sky, what could be seen of it, dark still except to elven eyes, and swollen with cloud. The air was cool and moist, smelled of mud and leaves, the dead things of winter. He breathed it in with relish. In this way his fear calmed. He was a woodsman, taught by Mablung himself in his infancy. He would survive. And save the twins, too…

The boys, he realised, were whispering quietly among themselves. Elrond, who was closest to him, lay facing away from him, and so his words were not easily discerned until Thranduil made an effort to listen. Elros, though, he could understand easily.

‘Don’t think about him,’ the boy said.

‘Do you think he’s noticed we were gone?’

‘I don’t know.’

A pause. A faint wind was blowing through the gorge.

‘I hope he’s noticed.’

No answer. But Thranduil could see Elros, his faced pinched and uneasy, his eyes closed as he deliberately ignored his brother, who nonetheless continued:

‘I hope he’s worried. It would serve him right.’

Elros’s eyes opened again. He moved under the blanket, brought a hand to his brother’s mouth.

‘Shut up. We left. I don’t want to think about him ever again.’

Elrond wriggled from beneath Elros’s hand.

‘I hope he’s so worried he’s in pain,’ he said. ‘I hope he misses us.’

 

*

 

Thranduil jerked awake.

He had not meant to fall asleep. It was dawn, and judging by the colour of the sky, but a fraction of a degree lighter than when he’d last seen it, he could not have slept more than a few minutes, but even so… Who knew when the sons of Fëanor might be upon them, or what other creatures of evil roamed. Thranduil felt a knot of anger in his stomach, anger at himself.

Beside him, the boys lay asleep. His precious charges. They had fallen asleep soon enough, after all. Now they lay, tired, loose from sleep, upon the ground. In slumber they looked exactly identical. And somehow they seemed… very real. Not Dior’s children’s ghosts; not the little king Elros tried to be, or whatever Elrond was; but children, young children, vulnerable. Carefully, wonderingly, Thranduil brushed a lock of black hair from Elrond’s eye. Elrond stirred faintly, and burrowed deeper under his blanket; but already Thranduil felt a surge of love within him. _I_ _’ll bring them to their kin_ , he thought, and for the first time he did not see himself as bringing the prizes he and his people desired to steal back; he saw _them_ , the children, happy and safe. _I_ _’ll_ be _their family._

Then, the horns.

Their sound was very distant, very deep, less a sound than a thrum in the air and through Thranduil’s chest. Yet even so, he recognised it - the sound of horns blown from the fortress.

He leaned over, and spoke urgently.

‘Wake up!’

Elros woke instantly, and raised bleary, questioning eyes.

‘They are sounding the alarm. We need to leave.’

The merest shadow of fear passed across Elros’s face, but for a moment, and then he nodded. Not a fearless child, but a brave one. But beside him Elrond had not yet woken. When Elros, sitting up, shook his shoulder, he merely made a soft sound and burrowed closer to his brother.

Thranduil could not wait. He reached over and grasped Elrond’s arm.

At once the boy bolted awake, and recoiled from Thranduil’s touch. He stared up at him, without recognition, a small animal, and then looked wildly about him. As soon as he saw his brother, the tension in his body unwound, and he sagged, as if a thread were snapped. He remembered; he understood. ‘We need to leave,’ Thranduil said softly.

So they did. The boys’ blankets was soon stuffed in their pack again, and Thranduil let them have some of the already stale bread they’d stolen from the kitchen, and a handful of dried fruit. For himself he took nothing. Who knew how long they would have to travel without succour.

They must strike East, Thranduil thought as they started walking. Make for the river Gelion. It ran close enough to Amon Ereb, and Thranduil knew the river well enough, from his mother’s tales and the time she had taken him there to visit her kin. If only they could reach the river… then Thranduil would find the secret fords the Green Elves used, and he might pray that Ulmo’s grace would defend them from the sons of Fëanor. Better still, in the woods east of Gelion Amrûnis’s kin, and Denethor’s of old, might still live; Thranduil doubted that they would willingly leave the forests they loved so well, not unless slaughtered or forced. And they would shelter him, and the children too, for his sake at least, and perhaps also for old King Elu, whose name they still knew and revered.

But they had to reach Gelion. That would not be easy. Elrond and Elros seemed more tired, if anything, than they had been before their few hours’ rest. They did their best, but it was hard work struggling through the brambles that lined the gorge; and the boys were by now sluggish and clumsy. It was cold, too, Thranduil realised, seeing one of them shiver, noting the too pale hands that emerged from too thin sleeves. Thranduil hadn’t noticed it before, but now he remembered how easily the humans who lived in Sirion had felt the cold. Dior, too, had felt it, he knew, wrapping himself in magnificent woollen cloaks and furs whenever frost touched the leaves outside his halls; though if Elwing had felt anything of the sort she had never let it be known. And now it was winter, albeit early in the season, and he was dragging their youngest scions through the land…

_It was_ their  _fault_ , he told himself. _I am only saving the children from them._

As they paused for a moment, Elros asked:

‘How far is it to where you are taking us?’

‘Not too far now,’ Thranduil said, as if he had any idea what ‘far’ or ‘near’ meant to Elros. As if he had any idea. _He only wants reassurance_. Then again he did not put it past Elros, that clear-eyed boy, to truly mean the question. He half-expected him to ask how far, _truly_ ; but instead Elros asked a worse question.

‘Will you really be able to take us there?’

Elrond elbowed him, and proclaimed:

‘Of course he will.’

‘How do you know?’

Elrond shrugged, and said: ‘Because they’ll kill him if he doesn’t.’

 

*

 

They had to climb out of the ravine. For a while Thranduil had been content to remain hidden there, but now it had taken a course to the south, and he feared that they would stray too far, when it was east they needed to go. He waited to find a spot where the northern bank wasn’t quite too steep. Before they started going up, though, Thranduil had them pause and eat some more food. They would need the strength.

By now they were too far from Amon Ereb to hear the horns anymore. Thranduil did not doubt that the alarm was still raised, and that by now hunters had been sent out - and probably the lords of the hill themselves - but at least he did not have to hear it; he did not have to think back to the fortress,and to his miserable captivity there...

Even so, it was Elrond who said:

‘I wonder how Maglor found out we were gone.’

‘Enough, Elrond.’

‘Probably when he came to wake us up.’

The boy’s voice was quiet, and his mind focused on this imagined moment. Thranduil could see it easily: Maglor bursting in, and then, taken aback, pulling back the covers on his charges’ beds, and the sheets… and then finding them gone, and roaring in fury. He smiled to imagine that; the thought pleased him, and he told Elrond as much.

But the boy stared at him, his grey gaze unwavering. Thranduil could not glance aside; looking into those eyes, he felt as though he were staring into twin lakes, seen from a great distance, a great heights; as though there was a universe inside that boy he could not fathom.

‘You don’t understand anything,’ Elrond said. ‘Maglor cared for us.’

‘He was your captor. Don’t you remember the cell in which you found me? _Your_ cell was more luxurious, that’s all. He tore you from your family. Have you forgotten that?’

‘No. Never. I hate him.’ And yet now Elrond’s face was troubled. Elros, still munching conscientiously on his dried meat, edged closer to his brother.

‘Elrond, are you afraid?’

‘No! You know I’m not.’

And it was true. Whatever else he was, the boy was bold, and tough in his way. And yet he cast his eyes aside, as if looking for something; raised his clenched fist, his mind seemingly elsewhere; rubbed at his chest, as if to soothe an ache.

Elros moved closer still, and brought his open hand to his brother’s chest, in a slow deliberate gesture - a healer’s gesture. As the palm pressed against him, Elrond took in a deep, relieved breath; but a moment later he pushed his twin’s hand down - unwilling to let go of whatever heartache he felt. He sagged in on himself, knees raised, back stooped; yet his gaze was lifted, and looked beyond their little circle, beyond the walls of the ravine, to where Amon Ereb still loomed.

 

*

 

They started going up. The boys struggled on hands and knees on the muddy slope, clinging to tree roots to pull themselves up; by now their clothes were filthy, and so was their hair. Thranduil did not dare imagine what he himself looked like, in his already ragged clothes. But none of them ever paused. A desperate energy filled them, or so it felt to Thranduil. Now and then he would slip up - too hungry and tired by now to retain his customary grace - and hurt himself slightly, and yet the pain only lashed him forth. Around them on both sides the ravine walls were almost vertical,  a steep fall from the plain level.

At last they reached the top of the bank. The vale of Gelion was not so very far now, Thranduil told himself. Ahead of them were but a few miles across rocky, grassy terrain, barely wrinkled with low hills. Yet when he turned about and looked west he felt his heart sink; for Amon Ereb was still visible, seeming higher and vaster and _closer_ than he had hoped. It was a trick of his eyes, he told himself, the hill seeming larger than it was because it stood alone; but he feared he had misjudged the course of the ravine, which seemed to have taken them less further east than he thought.

Close by, Elrond and Elros had collapsed in a heap, leaning against one another, panting. Part of him longed to do the same, throw himself down beside them and simply rest; but he’d also had enough of stillness in his cell. So he took in a deep breath, and went close to them. ‘We have to leave. The river is close now, and when we’ve gone across you’ll be able to rest all you want. But we can’t stay here.’

He grabbed them by the hand, and pulled them up, neither of them eager, but both resigned to go. He had to stoop a little and slow down so he did not drag them up, but soon enough they were walking at an acceptable pace. For the first time since they had  left the fortress, Thranduil allowed himself to feel hope - hope that they might make it after all. Briefly his thought strayed to his father - how glad he would be to see him; how happy Oropher would be to see Thingol’s little heirs, and how proud he would be of Thranduil for saving them…

And then he heard the sound of hooves.

The riders came from the south-west. Later Thranduil would understand that they had found a path across the ravine at a point where it was much shallower,  but a few miles away. Later he would realise that it would likely have been wiser to lay low, among the boulders and brambles, and hope the riders might pass without seeing them.

But at that moment he did not think. The sound of hooves filled him with too great a terror. He scooped up the boys, one in each arm, and began running. The children were awkwardly held, but light, and too surprised to protest.

And then they heard a shout.

‘ _EL_!’

Maglor’s voice, calling the boys - one or the other or both. Maglor’s voice, mightier than the sea. The very rocks, the earth and sky, seemed to echo it. Elros gave a jerk; and Elrond’s entire body stiffened, as if he had been mortally wounded. Thranduil glanced down into his face, and found it to be deathly pale, eyes staring madly into nothingness - bewitched.

Another cry.

‘ _EL_!’

Another jolt from Elros, a muffled sob. And Elrond started to fight, to squirm his way out of Thranduil’s hold. Suddenly he was a wild beast, struggling and clawing at the arm that upheld him. Thranduil dropped him.

The boy landed with a hard thud, and instantly turned about, and started running back. The riders, two scores of them, were going alongside the ravine, and just now turning towards Thranduil and Elros; they slowed down, careful along the rocky terrain, yet still going at a fair pace. The sound of their hooves was like rolling thunder.

Thranduil stared, transfixed, as Elrond ran towards them - towards Maglor. In his arms Elros had started weeping, calling after his brother.

Elrond ran on. He came closer to the riders. And yet at that moment a sudden terror seemed to seize him again. He did not want to be caught again, not dragged and imprisoned. He startled away from them, a tiny figure next to those huge horses and riders. 

Suddenly, Thranduil knew what would happen. Elros must have known it too, for suddenly his cries grew more desperate. _I have to run_ , Thranduil thought. _Keep the one I have, keep sweet Elros, leave the other. We still have a chance. They_ _’ll kill me if I don’t_. _Damn you, Elrond! My rescuer and my killer._

Still he stared at the boy. On one side were the riders, and he ran away from them. And yet he would not leave. And he could not stop. So he ran ahead, ahead, to the only path he could find; to the ravine, to the steep cliffside.

_Damn you, damn you, damn you._

The scream tore itself out of his throat.He cried out to Elrond, ran for him.

But Elrond did not hear, did not listen. In that moment, he was not Maglor’s child, or Thranduil’s, or even Eärendil’s. He was Elwing’s, and he leapt.


	5. Chapter 5

When Maglor’s soldiers found them, near the bottom of the ravine, Thranduil was muttering endless curses into the boy’s ear. ‘You killed me,’ he said, ‘damn you, curse you.’ Even as he spoke he held up Elrond as best he could, to keep him from sliding down further, as he hung, upside down, legs tangled in tree roots, a rivulet of blood running from his mouth and down his face. Perhaps it was the curses that kept the boy there, though he hung still and lifeless, that kept a trickle of breath flowing in his throat.

 

* 

 

Maglor ’s men were efficient. They took Elros, who had remained crouching at Thranduil’s feet, whimpering and still, and placed him on a horse. Then they had Thranduil relinquish his hold on Elrond; they were the ones who handled the boy, carefully cutting him down. As soon as he let go of Elrond, Thranduil was dragged aside, made to kneel in the mud, hands bound behind his back, and then forgotten. They did not set him free, though; after most of the rest had gone, he was tied to a horse and taken back to the fortress, along with a few soldiers. 

From there he was taken to a cell again. Again a thick wooden door slammed behind him. If not for the full set of iron bars at his window, it might have been the very same cell. Perhaps it  _ was _ . Perhaps the whole escape had been but a fever dream, a delusion. But no. Thranduil could still feel, thrumming softly against his fingertips, Elrond ’s pulse as he had held the fallen child. It was the frailest, the most tenuous, the most real thing he had ever felt - that life of a wounded child.

A few hours later, the door to his cell opened. Two soldiers came in, took him out.  _ It is as Elrond said _ , he thought.  _ I failed in keeping them safe, I failed in escaping. Now it is time to die _ .

But the soldiers took him up a narrow flight of stairs, and then to well-furnished room. A fire roared in a corner, and a narrow tub stood in front of it. On the other side stood a small pedestal table, and on it was half a loaf of bread, and a platter of cheese and meat. One of Thranduil ’s escort gestured towards it, and said: 

‘Lord Maglor suggests you make use of these comforts.’

‘I want to see the twins.’

A shrug; the soldiers left.

He might have made a valiant stand, and denied himself any sustenance before he had been let in to see the children. But really he was all alone, with no witness to his righteousness; and he was too tired to resist temptation. He marched over to the table, and grabbed a handful of cheese, stuffed it in his mouth. He had no grace left, no sense of civility; he did not care. He merely ate. The food was salty and fat in his mouth, and he swallowed it without chewing. Next he took the loaf of bread with both hands, and tore into it. 

He caught a flicker of movement from the other side of the room. When he looked up, he saw it was only himself, glimpsed through a looking-glass standing next to the tub. He went near it, the bread still clutched in his hands. He looked at himself.

A frightful creature stared back. Its clothes were grey and brown rags; its hair hung in tangled ropes down its back. Its eyes were too large, and its skin pallid. There were smears of blood on its face and bony shoulders. Its cheeks were distended with food; and then, when it had swallowed, sunken and narrow. And then it grinned, startled and mad. Thranduil had to look aside. He ate the rest of the food standing up, staring down at the tiled floor, unthinking.

Eventually he wiped away crumbs from his mouth. He stripped away his rags, poured hot water from a kettle on the fire into the tub, and then sank into the water. He washed himself with a little soap, a pumice stone and a towel left beside the tub. He scrubbed himself very hard, till the water was brown and grey, and his skin raw and smarting.

He noticed he had begun weeping.Warm tears ran down, across his mouth and chin, dripping into the water below. He could not understand why, at first, but then he sobbed harder. His body shook, gulped down air. He wept for his wasted body, the months he had spent in his cell, his escape and his failure. He had tried to scrub himself clean so very hard, and yet his body still remembered. His hollow, heaving chest still held his months of captivity. His raw-skinned arms would not forget the weight of Elrond as he had held him up, during the long minutes when he thought he had killed the child.

All of a sudden, he stopped, the end as sudden as the beginning; as if a door had been slammed shut again. He dried his tears, stepped out of the tub, dried the rest of himself. A change of clothes lay by the side of the tub, and he donned it, revelling in the warmth and softness of the fabric.

When the soldiers came back, he was ready to face Maglor.

 

*

 

He was shown to another room, the soldiers vanishing behind him as soon as they had led him in. That one was dominated by a large four poster bed. Between it and a window, sitting in an armchair at the head of the bed, was Maglor. Next to the door was a small table, not unlike that in the room which Thranduil had left before, and on it also a platter of food, save that this one was untouched. There was a knife beside it, and Thranduil took it.

In a moment he strode over to Maglor, and pressed the knife ’s edge against the other’s throat.

Maglor raised his eyes, and looked him over.

‘You had kin in Sirion. Or was it Doriath?’

‘Doriath,’ Thranduil answered. He pressed the knife closer, till a thin red line appeared on the white flesh of Maglor’s throat. ‘My mother.’

‘Still, you will not kill me.’

‘I could.’

‘Of course. You would be caught instantly and my brother would devise a terrible death for you. Or he might do worse, and give you a terrible life.’

‘I’m not afraid of dying,’ said Thranduil, lying. ‘Killing you would still be worthwhile.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Maglor sighed as if bored. ‘Even so, you will not kill me, for the same reason my brother and I did not kill you.’

The knife trembled in Thranduil ’s hand, so hard did he grip it. He tried to imagine a flow of blood, gushing from Maglor’s throat. But imagination was not enough; it only made him want to kill Maglor the harder. He had to put the image aside, calm the beating of his heart.

‘For the boys,’ he said from between clenched teeth. 

Maglor nodded minutely. The thin skin of his neck moved beneath Thranduil ’s blade. He tossed the knife aside, heard it hit a wall and clatter to the ground.

He sat down heavily on the bed. The mattress shifted beneath his weight - he hadn ’t meant for that - but neither of the children who slept on it made a sound or stirred.

Thranduil looked at them. Elros on the further side of the bed, on his flank; his face still scrunched and pale, the skin around his eyes red and puffy. Yet even in sleep he seemed determined, and he had thrown a protective arm around his brother.

And there too lay Elrond. His face and neck were scratched by briars, and his cheeks and brow were badly bruised. He had broken bones as well, Thranduil knew from the chatter of the soldiers as they ’d brought them back; only by sheerest luck had he not snapped his neck too.

‘They love you,’ he said to Maglor, slowly, with loathing. 

‘And I love them,’ Maglor answered in his low, beautiful voice. 

Anger surged again through Thranduil. He had to focus again on the boys. To keep himself from striking Maglor, he laid his hand delicately on Elrond ’s cheek. When he spoke again, his voice was thick even to his ears:

‘Don’t say that as if it were an excuse.’ He paused. His breathing was laboured; a spot of acid at his throat. ‘I used to think that hatred and greed led you to your worst crimes. Now I understand that you can poison even love. That you have committed your worst crime with love.’

‘Have I?’

Maglor ’s voice, so very soft.

‘Yes. You’ve laid shackles on children’s hearts. If you had only bound their hands and feet, with iron and stones, their life would be simple. But you had to bind them to you and make them love you. Now they can’t ever escape.’ _You_ _’ve them their own gaolers; you’ve made a child the enemy of himself_. Thranduil laughed bitterly.  ‘You ought to be put to death a thousand times for that, and I would gladly be the one to do it. But of course you cannot be punished.’ Fury beat through him, and yet he poured all of his gentleness to Elrond, whose cheek he stroked with all the tenderness he could muster.

‘And you’re no stranger to the shackles of love, I think,’ said Maglor.

‘Of course not. How could I be? I loved this family before the twins were even born. And Elrond…’ He stroked the boy’s cheek gently, willing him back to health. ‘He came to me when I was most alone and lost. He gave me bread, and his company. I will always be thankful for that, no matter where he led me after, or where I led him. It started with an act of pity, of kindness.’

‘Yes.’ Maglor’s voice was tender and fond. Thranduil knew that he must be smiling, and with effort he stifled his anger. ‘It takes a kind and lovely soul to succour one in your circumstances… and even more so to love one as blighted and wretched as I am, so ill-deserving of pity, let alone affection.’ And then, more sharply: ‘Not that he is a sweet child. Elros would be a prince in any court between Cuiviénen and the Walls of Night, but Elrond…’ 

‘I know.’ _Mad, wild little thing._ He remembered what the boy had said, how he’d hoped for Maglor’s suffering, and run back to him.

But how could he not be mad, torn as he was? Perhaps Elros was the strange one, with his miraculous, impossible sanity - a child of the future, whatever it was he saw there, crowned with whatever hope he saw, steady because he must. And Elrond … Elrond, born to the past, the refugees, the slaughters and the fires, betrayals and endless fleeing. How perfectly mad to love, in this world, how perfectly right to be mad. It made Thranduil want to weep again; it made him want to snatch up that sleeping, wounded child, and smother him against his chest.

‘And yet,’ said Maglor very softly. ‘I think sometimes that if by some miracle it could all be washed away, the fear and the anger and the hate, then Elrond might be kindness itself. Kindness as bright as summer, and brighter for all the storms before. It would be a miracle, though. It would take the centuries, nay, millennia of an Elven life, and for all we know he has only the decades of a man. Perhaps even less than that.’ 

‘I will see him healed.’ The words slipped out of Thranduil’s mouth, almost without his volition. A sworn oath, or foreknowledge? Yet somehow they strengthened his heart. But then fear came upon him again. His gaze slid up towards Maglor. ‘If I should live this long.’

Maglor glanced back at him.

‘You wonder what is to be done with you.’

‘Yes.’

'My brother says you ought to be put to death, for attempting to steal our prisoners. I told him he of all people should not grudge a prisoner ’s attempt to escape.’ Maglor sighed. ‘In any case, you remained behind to save Elrond, when you might have run, and I shan't forget that. I'll set you loose, whatever Maedhros says.'

Thranduil nodded. Silence. Perhaps Maglor expected thanks; but Thranduil gave him none. After a little while Maglor went on, adding with an even,  unconcerned tone: 'You've caused enough heartache and trouble already, however. Don't ever come back, if you value your life. If you come within ten leagues of Amon Ereb, or of the boys, wherever they are, and you'll be slain long before you ever set eyes on them, or they see you.'

'This is farewell, then?'

'It must be,' said Maglor, even as he drew from the bed. For that at least Thranduil was thankful.

For a while he stared down at the boys, unsure of what to do. At length he kissed Elros ’s brow, and the child did not stir. Foreknowledge clutched at Thranduil’s heart, and he felt somehow as if this were truly farewell - yet he did not fear for the boy. He looked at him awhile, watching his chest rise and fall steadily, and his serene profile under black curls. 

Elrond was less easy to look at, with his bruised and cut face. His hand was very small in Thranduil ’s, light as a bird that might at any moment take flight. But then, even as Thranduil gazed down at him, his eyes opened, first mere slivers, and then fully - though their gaze was weary, and he did not speak. Again Thranduil felt as if he were staring into worlds - grey and silent worlds in the boy’s eyes, too distant for thought. And yet in those worlds a bright soul was travelling, travelling, through regions of hurt and strife, seeking freedom and refuge. It was only a moment, and soon the boy, sighing into sleep, closed his eyes again. 

 

_ * _

 

And so Thranduil went, league after league, alone, and with every step he took Amon Ereb grew smaller and lonelier behind him, and his breathing grew easier, and his step lighter. He did not look back, not till long after he had forded the river Gelion, and climbed the foothills of the Ered Luin. Only when the pass was near did he allow himself to turn, and gaze one last time upon Beleriand. Amon Ereb, by then, was but a speck on the horizon. 

He did not think of his cell, or his captors - only of the child, Elrond, as he had first alighted on his window.

_ And so farewell,  _ he thought, casting his mind over the wide silent plain.  _ Fare well, my prince - till I see you again. _

**Author's Note:**

> TBC


End file.
